Dudley Grunt

OCNA Admin DudleyGrunt and his good friend NativTXN (Denise) were recently on the GeoGearHeads Podcast episode 197, talking Solo Caching. A libsyn embed of the show is at the bottom of this post. This show is not about OCNA, but we like to promote DG, whom we believe to be the most prolific guest in Geocaching Podcasting history. 🙂 You’ll notice we did not refer to NativTXN as an OCNA Admin. This is because she got way too busy in life, and stepped down from her position with us in mid August 2015. Our records (a post in our forums) indicate she was announced as a member of the OCNA Team on May 1st 2012. We thank her for her 3+ years of service!

GeoGearHeads is a near weekly feature with The Bad Cop and DarrylW4 discussing topics of interest to Geocachers, Location-based Gamers, and Technology Enthusiasts. They record the shows live through Google+ Hangout On Air Thursday nights at 9:10PM Eastern/6:10PM Pacific (The upcoming shows are listed on the Google+ GeoGearHeads page). You can subscribe to the audio version through iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher, watch the shows on YouTube, and check them out on FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter.

Please join us to celebrate our 5th Anniversary tonight, Tuesday August 18th at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, for what we believe may be the first sanctioned Geocaching event streamed on the website ustream.tv. We are certainly not the first to stream a Geocaching event, that honor goes to The Dirtbag Geocaching Society; but we at OCNA allow this type of event to occur, unlike other Geocaching websites.

You can see the event page here, and it will be hosted on DudleyGrunt’s ustream channel. Note: You will not need a ustream account to participate. And we definitely have at least one recent newsworthy Geocaching topic to discuss; the closure of a similarly named website with which we are not affiliated, that is (was) owned by a major GPS Manufacturer. 🙂

OCNA Admins DudleyGrunt and NativTXN were recently on the GeoGearHeads Podcast episode 178, talking OCNA, in an episode titled OpenCaching NA II. They were last on that podcast on Episode 125. If you count by 10’s on your fingers, you can figure out that was just over a year ago, hence this episode being titled OpenCaching NA II. Anytime our Admins are on a Geoaching Podcast, we run it here on the blog as well. Listen to them give an overview of our site, with an emphasis on our recently released Challenge Caches. GeoGearHeads is a near weekly feature with The Bad Cop and DarrylW4 discussing topics of interest to Geocachers, Location-based Gamers, and Technology Enthusiasts. They record the shows live through Google+ Hangout On Air Thursday nights at 9:10PM Eastern/6:10PM Pacific (The upcoming shows are listed on the Google+ GeoGearHeads page). You can subscribe to the audio version through iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher, watch the shows on YouTube, and check them out on FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter.

OCNA’s longest tenured Admin, DudleyGrunt, is an official fill in host on The Geocaching Podcast, and fulfilled those duties for the first time on Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 on episode 401. In addition to discussing our site’s new Challenge caches with host HeadHardHat and fellow co-host Taz427, they also discuss two Terracaching.com Cyber caches which support very worthy causes. Those being DG’s own 2015 Walk to Defeat ALS Cyber Cache (which supports defeating ALS, and more specifically, the team Ben’s Buddies in honor of DG’s Father) and St. Baldrick’s 2015 Cyber Cache (which supports childhood Cancer research, and more specifically, Team OConnellz). You can listen to (and watch) the video version of the whole show below. There is the usual pre-show banter, but the actual show starts at the 6:40 mark.

Not to be outdone by green Frogs with antennae on their head, or blue Squirrels that don’t really look too much like Squirrels, OpenCaching North America is ringing in 2015 by introducing our new mascot; Hank the Hawk! The idea for him, believe it or not, was born out of a thread in our forums started by a cacher who couldn’t find their own cache listings on our site. We quickly figured out he was confusing us with Garmin’s Opencaching.com, a rather common mistake. He commented how the site looked a little different then he remembered, and there was no “little blue mascot guy thingy”. 🙂 We then started our own thread in our own sub forum visible only to our admins and volunteers, and the idea for Hank was born. Hank is a red-tailed Hawk, by the way. For more on why he is a red-tailed Hawk, why he’s named Hank, and who made him, as well as some other things OCNA has planned for 2015, click the read more button below.

Our longest tenured admin, DudleyGrunt AKA Dave, was on The Geocaching Podcast on Wednesday, November 12, 2014. He went under the geocaching microscope on episode 377 in his bid to possibly become their fourth host. What interesting and fun facts will be find out about this very influential geocaching entity? There was plenty of talk about OCNA and alternative geocaching sites. Watch the video version of the podcast above. And be sure to check out The Geocaching Podcast every week, which airs live on Wednesdays at 9:30 PM Eastern Time, as well as host Andy “HeadHardHat” Smith’s other weekly show, The Geocaching Reboot Podcast, which is recorded live on Thursdays at 8:30 PM Eastern Time with his co-host Amy HeadHardHatress.